


And In Our Youth, Our Innocence

by Trekkele



Series: Trek Fest 2018 [6]
Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Five Plus One Format, Gen, Self-Doubt, and in space, chekov is a mob baby prove me wrong, eleventh hour fic, it aint easy being young, ugh sorry pasha, you can't because no one has a decent canon backstory ha
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-13
Updated: 2018-07-13
Packaged: 2019-06-09 16:54:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15272022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trekkele/pseuds/Trekkele
Summary: Pavel Chekhov has always been too young. Until he proves he is not.Or, five times someone told Chekhov he was too young to do something, or his age affected his situation, and the one time he didn't let it.





	And In Our Youth, Our Innocence

**Author's Note:**

> I feel like the word count for these is steadily going down, but also at least they exist? Trek fest is being a real challenge, but I'm also glad I made this decision, but I also want to kick my own ass for doing this to myself.

**8.**

 

It's not the first time his uncles have told him no. 

 

It is, however the first time they have used his age as an excuse. 

 

Until now, it has always been, _ “When you can hold all the cards in one hand Pavel, _

_ When you can count the pack as we shuffle Pavel, _

_ When you can see over the table without kneeling Pavel.” _

 

It is a simple job. Go to a casino, play several hands of cards, lose a lot of money. 

 

Wait till the casino loves you and then cheat your way out of their entire safe of credits. 

Well. Not  _ cheat  _ exactly. Pavel and his uncles have always been of the opinion that if you aren't smart enough to play the game to win,  _ they  _ should not be the ones to suffer. 

And neither should their bank accounts. 

 

Pavel is not stupid. He's not young either, no matter what his uncles say. 

He knows what they mean when they talk about “jobs”, and why they only talk about his father when his mother isn't home, and why they never follow them to lay flowers at his grave. Only drive them to the cemetery and watch, stony faced and silent as his mother tells him one more happy story about their time together. 

He knows that someday she will run out of happy stories. And that is when he will ask his uncle's to take over the telling. 

 

But now he has spent months perfecting his game, has watched and learned and built an understanding of the cards to rival even his families and he want to play with them, at the tables like it is meant to be played. 

 

“You are too young Pasha. Someday you will thank us for this.” His Uncle Dmitri always has a cigar in his mouth, unlit of course. He tried lighting it once that Pavel can remember. His cheek was red the entire dinner from where Pavel’s mother had slapped it out of his mouth and into the bowl of potatoes. 

 

“Probably when he realizes he will not need to explain this story to his StarFleet.” Uncle Karl is the largest person he knows. He also knits the most beautiful sweaters. Pavel picks at the stars on his midnight blue pearled one from his last birthday. 

 

He spends the rest of the night grumbling into the differential equations his mother agreed to do with him. She was being awfully kind about his fowl temper, despite Pavel making three basic mistakes because of his distraction. 

 

Someday he would show them. His youth would mean nothing and he would clean out table after table, as his Uncles watched and laughed at how clever he was.

 

**12.**

  
  


He stared at the filled and signed and dated application with barely concealed frustration. 

 

His mother had consented, his professors had written glowing,  _ glowing _ !, recommendations and he had recently co-authored a paper on Hargrove Particles with one of his mother’s colleagues.

 

But apparently that was not good enough for StarFleet. 

 

Oh no, apparently, twelve was  _ too young  _ for StarFleet. Apparently one's accomplishments did not matter if one could not (yet) grow a beard.

 

Well.

 

As his Aunt Irena said,  _ there was always next year. And when you get tired of waiting, hack into the system and sabotage the competition. _

 

Although that may not be the best method for this particular goal.

 

**14.**

 

He has been at the academy for more than a year now. One year, two months, and three days, if he wants to sound like the  ~~ scary ~~ Vulcan professor Miss Uhura pretends no one knows fancies her.

 

Or maybe she’s right and no one knows he likes her. The Academy is a strange mix between what he thinks High School and University would be like, if he had any personal experiences as a legal adult to base it on. He thinks attending them at several years earlier than his classmates screwed his data. Eh, he has his mother's stories and her preference for American style soap operas. So far that seems to be accurate.

Except everyone is smart. Or at least is supposed to be.

 

His Uncles just want to know if  _ anyone's causing you trouble Pasha, we know how it can be when you're smarter than anyone else _ , as if he would tell them. He doesn't need dead cadets showing up in the river just because he can’t put on his big boy pants on one leg at time.

 

So he spends a lot of time in the library, sharing a table with Kirk and his sulky friend. Sulu lets him hang out in the gym when he practices fencing and Miss Uhura is always willing to spend lunch speaking to him in Russian. 

 

He thinks if her were older he would ask for help. He thinks if he were older no one would look twice at the way he dragged a backpack around always or slipped into Russian when he was excited or the way he had papers published in subjects his classmates groaned about. 

 

But he is not older, so he spends time with people, or near people, who do not care that he is not older and he pretends that he is not very much tempted to call his Uncles and invite them to visit. 

 

Some days, when he argues with Kirk about transporters and Hikaru about engine output, he can even believe himself.

 

**17.**

 

There is a frantic sort of beat rushing through his mind even as the bridge rocks back and forth into a black hole of their own creation.

 

He thinks he should be scared. He thinks he should be seeing his mother's smile the first time he showed her the drawings he scribbled onto his math sheets, he thinks he should be remembering the lazy smoke coiling around hs cards as he wins chocolate from Dmitri and Ivan and Irene and all the rest, shouts and laughter and chalk rustling through the air because family is sometimes built out of a deck of cards. He thinks he should be seeing a woman materialize inches above the transport pad, head snapping into the floor even as Commander Spock shows what he thinks is hope in his dusty human eyes, fingers curling around someone who almost wasn’t there.

 

He thinks that this is what he dreamed of, years and miles and parsecs away, stars dangling over his bed as his mother brushed theorems and equations out of his tangled hair.

 

He thinks that time is going too quickly, time is taking too long, he thinks he wishes he had a chance to play poker with his uncles one last time, not for money or chocolate or all the teasing in the stars.

 

He thinks he wishes that “ _ Oh great, he's seventeen” _ isn’t what wrinkles through his mind as the ship screams in protest because there are some things a straship should not attempt to escape. 

 

He thinks he wishes he did not agree. 

Seventeen is too young to die. 

 

He thinks this is what the doctor meant.

 

He thinks he almost wishes he did not agree.

 

**17**

 

Two weeks, three days, several hours and three hundred seventy three questions, five briefings, two reunions, and two doctors visits later, Pavel finds himself sitting beside a hospital bed he has no business being beside.

 

Amanda Greyson is almost a legend among certain Cadets. Her work on the universal translator was a work of art, and according to stories Hoshi Sato herself asked that she be promoted because of it.

 

Pavel does not know her exact rank, or what her status is within StarFleet as of now. However, he does know that she is in an induced coma, that her brain activity is stable, that her body is weakened by years of a non-earth environment, that her son visits precisely at the hours of 10:00 am and 4:00 pm and stays for an hour each time, usually speaking to her in low, steady Vulcan, a language he does not understand. He knows that her husband, Ambassador Sarek, visits as often, sometimes thrice daily, as he can, but his status among Vulcans at this time of crisis does not allow a solid schedule such as his son’s.

He knows Lieutenant Uhura has visited, and that Captain Burnham has visited, almost as often as Spock, and that Captain Kirk - Jim, has come and spoken to her in a different language every time.

 

He thinks the Captain has been apologizing. He cannot bring himself to start. 

 

He believes that Ambassador Sarek allows his visits because of his age. The look in his eyes is one he recognizes, if only because he grew up around people who did not always display affection as terrans would, but he always knew he had it nonetheless. Dr. McCoy has muttered about “ _ hobgoblins adopting humans as if it’s another logical course of action _ ” often enough that he knows he is not alone in this belief.

 

So he takes up his post, because he does not have so many classes to teach or negotiations to attend and he can spend some hours sitting beside an almost strangers bed for no other reason than he feels he should. 

 

And if he reads Alice in Wonderland and Tolstoy and Harry Potter to her in equal measure, he has the excuse of his youth. For now.

 

**+17** .

 

He is sitting in a coffee shop, pretending that he is drinking his iced mint mocha and not staring at the cute girl behind the counter today when the Captain sits down beside him and stares with him.

 

He is very glad he does not spill his coffee all over, because even though it is iced it would still be very uncomfortable. And embarrassing. 

 

“She’s cute. You might have better luck if you talk to her, instead of the creepy staring.” Capt - Jim steals his cup and takes a sip, pulling a curious face and sliding it back over to him.

 

“So Chris noticed something strange recently.” He says it so casually, allowing Pavel to forget for almost a moment that “Chris” must be Admiral Pike, the Captain he served under for less than a day. But than he remembers, because the Captain, no matter how many times he asks them to call him Jim, shouts of Captain still follow him around campus now, the Captain has turned those eyes onto him and he understands suddenly why being young and feeling young are not the same, not at all. “He says you’ve withdrawn your application to serve on the Enterprise.”

 

He knows he is babbling, he knows he is stringing along a little web of lies about experience and different postings and he knows, he knows that it is because he is afraid, of being to young of being to slow of not saving, almost breaking someone else's mother or brother or son next time. And he knows the Captain knows.

 

But the coffee is sliding across the table again, and he can feel the moment sink into his bones and turn into something else. “Being young has nothing to do with it. All of us, from Admiral Pike down to the stowaway in medbay - that would be me, by the way - were terrified, and had every right to be. But we did our jobs anyways, and in  _ some cases,”  _ he stares at him over the edge of Pavels cup,  _ “ _ we did more than that - because people like you, you’re the reason we got home in the end. All of us, working through our fear, despite it or because of it. If you want to serve on another ship, you’ll only get our full support and recommendations. But if you think you need to do this because you are too young, or too scared, please don’t. I know for a fact me and Sulu never would have made it without you, and plenty of Vulcans agree.”

 

The space beside him suddenly very empty, as though the Captain had simply vanished once he said everything he thought Chekhov should hear. 

He has never allowed his age to stop him before.

 

He knows it would be a shame to start now.

**Author's Note:**

> Coupla notes and then I'll stop talking - Andrei Chekhov (Pashas dad) got killed ala the godfather - he thought it would be a good idea to beat a mobsters daughter. Spoiler - it wasn't. Canon can't seem to agree on his moms name, but a mobsters kid would have a coupla of identities, even if she's a mathematician. Yeah Chekhov gets it from his mom. 
> 
> Style wise, the first three got together, Nyota stands alone, and Sulu, Chekov, and scotty go together. I didn't plan that.
> 
> Also, as you may have noticed, Amanda Greyson survives. All the fics in this series exist in the same universe. And Sarek...may have an issue with adoption. He and Batman should talk it out. 
> 
> Kay, see ya'll next week thanks for stopping by, leave a comment at the door! Also I'm on tumblr under the same name. I'm just as annoying there, promise :)


End file.
